While browsing through the collective bargaining agreement database on the Government of Alberta website, I noticed a new contract for warehouse workers.
These workers are employed by Sysco at their Acheson warehouse, which is on the outskirts of western Edmonton. They include shippers, receivers, stock persons, freezer persons, yard persons, loaders, and janitors.
These 150 or so workers are represented by Local 987 of the Teamsters and their previous contract had expired this past March.
They settled on a new 6-year contract just last month, about 6 months later.
And what did they get in this contract? Well, Mediation Services hasn’t received the entire contract yet, so I can’t provide a comprehensive comparison between the two contracts. However, they did include pay increases.
| 26 March 2024 | 10.00% |
| 26 March 2025 | 3.00% |
| 26 March 2026 | 4.00% |
| 26 March 2027 | 4.00% |
| 26 March 2028 | 4.00% |
| 26 March 2029 | 4.00% |
That’s a combined 29%, or 32.54% if you account for compounding increases. That works out to an average of 4.83% (5.42%) per year.
Here’s what their raises looked like in their last contract.
| 26 March 2018 | 3.00% |
| 26 March 2019 | 3.00% |
| 26 March 2020 | 3.00% |
| 26 March 2021 | 3.00% |
| 26 March 2022 | 3.00% |
| 26 March 2023 | 3.00% |
That’s a combined 12% over 6 years, with an annual average of, well, 3%, in case that wasn’t already clear.
This new contract is much better. And 10% might seem a lot for that first year, but we have to remember that inflation in 2022 and 2023 was much higher than anyone could have predicted back in 2018, when this contract was settled.
Between March 2017 and March 2024, the consumer price index in Alberta increased from 136.8 to 167.3. That’s a jump of 30.5 points, or 22.29%. And that’s 10 percentage points more than what they got over the life of their entire last contract. Hence the starting increase of 10%.
Now that doesn’t cover the inflation between March 2024 and March 2025, but that should be covered by the following increases, given that inflation in 2024 so far has still come in at under 3%.
The new collective agreement will expire in March 2030.
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[…] Well, that’s weird, since Calgary factory workers got a 55% raise in their most recent collective agreement, which settled just this past January. And last September, Edmonton warehouse workers won a 29% raise. […]